You must have felt it, too. The need to go out and make a powerful impact on the world.

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Some days, you might feel like the world is against you. Things just aren’t going your way. I get it; I’ve been there.

And it’s hard getting out of that rut of looking at everything from your own eyes. It’s almost as if everything that has gone wrong builds up on the thing that went wrong before, and then you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.

What does one do in a situation like this? Who do you turn to? Will the insights from other people change the way things are? Will you somehow get inspiration from what they say? What I’m going to say might upset you…

It doesn’t change.

The only thing that needs to change is your perspective on the situation. Let’s just say that you need to start seeing things from an upside-down view.

Well, how do you do this? Get into a handstand! Why? Handstands are not only a wonderful way to condition your body but they are also great for conditioning the mind. You need strength, balance and belief to do a handstand. But these three essential things are what you need to tackle any challenges in life.

That is why on 25 June 2016, we challenged the world to go upside down for International Handstand Day. Founded by Alvin Tam in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, IHD is a day the earth celebrates the joy of being upside down to inspire fitness, friendship and making the world a better place.

I joined him to help make 2016 even bigger, by bringing the community together prior to the event. I also recruited one of the most influential Instagrammers in the gymnastics community, Emily Chan. (Who also happens to be an amazing gymnast I had the chance to coach for a very short time!)

She created an IHD Instagram account and grew it to almost two thousand before it got shut down. We all freaked out for a good few days, scrambling and emailing Instagram. Well, bad news: it’s not likely that you’ll get a deactivated account reinstated. So, Emily took one of her other accounts and re-branded to IHD.

(Note: we did manage to get the old account reinstated, eventually! Contact me and I’ll tell you what we did.)

Together, the team created an ambassador program, in which selected accounts would promote IHD in the month leading up to the event. Since we were all doing this voluntarily and with no funding, we had to get creative in ways to get people onboard with this.

Creative Ways To Give Back To A Community Without Spending Lots Of Money

1. Re-post or feature accounts. This was our main strategy for growth on Instagram. Sometimes we did contests: creative ones, such as post your handstands with a hat or flashmobs.

2. Use resources you already have. I had some craft materials to make custom rings. I pulled together my kids and we had a fun day making IHD rings. Making the rings = $0. Sending them out = $24.

3. Communicate with awesome tools. I set up a system where if someone said they wanted to become an ambassador, they would be emailed the Terms & Agreement. Once filled, it would be Zapped (Zapier) into our Slack channel letting us know. From there, Emily or I would make a referral link for them to put in their Bio, as we wanted to see where referrals were coming from.

4. Support your members. One of the ambassadors, Olivia Vivian, had a terrible fall in a competition. We wanted to do a little something to show her how many people really cared about her. We asked people to post videos or photos of themselves doing a handstand on Instagram, with a hashtag and messages of support for Olivia. What I really love about what these young talented handstanders had to offer is their creativity in sharing one simple message.

From there, we had quite a bit of momentum and I had to move on to influencer outreach. When reaching out to celebrities, huge brands and celebrities…

1. Find out what they are doing/promoting/working on.
2. Help them help you. Give them copy and links in a simple, sharable way.
3. Don’t be sad if you get a lot of rejection, because you’ll soon find out that it’s working.

Then, when the day comes, you’ll see super-cool, upside-down people in amazing places – from the youngest to the 100-year-old who handstands underwater. When an Indian superstar posted his handstand, his followers and fans filled Twitter with handstand replies and websites started sharing IHD goodness.

With that momentum, we saw British Gymnastics and BBC Sport jump on the campaign to spread the inspiration of fitness (they used a video I made of Emily!). Cirque also got in the spirit and put together an amazing video with their team all around the globe. Then, some of my personal heroes came to join the fun!

This event was the perfect example of how a community can come together in creative ways to inspire fitness and friendship.